Painting with Value

Process

here's a step-by-step guide for creating a painting using acrylics, focusing on building up layers and exploring application techniques:

Prepare Your Surface:

• Apply a coat of gesso to your surface for priming.

• Apply a color wash over the gesso, or use a colored gesso for added texture and color variation.

Transfer Your Heihei Image:

1. • Use carbon paper to transfer your mulllet image onto the prepared surface.

1. COLOUR WASH LAYER-Lay in Basic Colors:

1. • Warm red wash over the fish. Yellow wash in all other areas [Cool red if you don't have warm, they will just be "pinker"]

2. SHADOWS [dry brush] LAYER 

   • mix warm red and cool blue to make dark violet and use a DRY BRUSH technique to add in all shadow areas {including fish] REFER TO THE B&W IMAGE for mid to dark values.  Work in the direction of the curves on the fish and shadows]   

   • Consider the shading in a similar way to drawing, focusing on the darkest areas such as the eye socket and beak, under the neck and parts of the feathers on right hand side.

3. COLOUR BLOCKING LAYER & 4 MAIN COLOUR LAYER

use BLEND to paint in the table top [yellow+violet] bottom right & top left and violet top right. 

FABRIC - [white+little yellow+little violet]

• look at the B&W image and follow the brushstroke direction to add light layers of colour to the cloth. Paint OVER the violet shadow [leave a small violet edge around the outside].  Build up layers in the lighter value areas and add more white to these areas.

• DRY BRUSH shadows back in when fabric is dry and do the highlights as well.  if needed add stronger lines in the dark creased areas.

FISH [red, yellow, white, violet],

Ignore all the texture and detail of the fish, start with the base colour and work up to the lighter details

• Fish eyes - if you have added darker shadows, you just need to do a loose yellow circle and highlight

• paint fish in a stronger red [refer to colour image]

• BLEND in areas of yellow on tail and heads. BLEND violet to add in shadow on bottom right of each fish and around gills/eyes

5. DETAILS LAYER

• when dry begin to use layers of BROKEN COLOUR in white & orange to represent the texture and details of the scales [refer to colour image]

• when dry add in final details of shadows [dry brush] fins and tail details.  

• refine any shadows, highlight and details across the work